Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Space... ...the final frontier.These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise.Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds......to seek out new life and new civilizations... ...to boldly go WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE!

(cue ethereal female harmonizing)

Star Trek, I thought, was a very inconsistent show, which at
times sparkled with true ingenuity and pure science fiction approaches,
and other times was more carnival-like, and very much more the creature
of television than the creature of a legitimate literary form.

--Rod Serling

KIRK: We're
on a thousand planets and spreading out. We cross fantastic distances
and everything's alive, Cochrane. Life everywhere. We estimate there are
millions of planets with intelligent life. We haven't begun to map
them. Interesting?COCHRANE: How would you like to sleep for a hundred and fifty years and wake up in a new world?KIRK: It's all out there waiting for you...

--"Metamorphosis"

SPOCK: It is my sincere wish that you do not give up your search for Eden. I
have no doubt but that you will find it, or make it yourselves.

--"The Way to Eden"

Leonard Nimoy 1931-2015

"I went through a definite identity crises.
The question was whether to embrace Mr. Spock or to fight the onslaught
of public interest. I realize now that I really had no choice in the
matter. Spock and Star Trek were very much alive and there wasn't anything I could do to change that."

Nimoy grew up in Mattapan, at the time a Jewish neighborhood on Boston's West Side.

Nimoy had a bit part in the classic 1950s science fiction thriller THEM!
It must have been an itty-bitty bit part, because I've seen this film
several times, and for the life of me don't remember him being in it. He
WAS uncredited, so I wouldn't have known to look.

Throughout the 1950s and '60s, Nimoy made many one-shot appearances on various TV shows, such as The Virginian and The Man from U.N.C.L.E, as did some future costars of his (look carefully.)

In 1964, Nimoy appeared on an episode of The Lieutenant (imagine that women as a nurse in a miniskirt), a series produced by a man by the name of...

...Gene Roddenberry, who had written for such 1950s-early '60s series as Highway Patrol and Wagon Train.The Lieutenant lasted just one season, and he now had an idea for a new show, one that would take place in the future, and in outer space.

No,
not that show. These days it seems almost sacrilege to mention these
two science fiction series in the same breath, but in their initial
1960s runs, Lost in Space was the more popular.

1. Future Plans

According
to the many interviews he gave during his lifetime, Gene Roddenberry
wanted to use science fiction (a genre he had been a fan of since
childhood) to explore social issues such as racism, sexism, militarism,
and more basic philosophical concerns as what does it mean to be happy.
All this thematic exploration would take place in a starship (a common
sci-fi trope) that itself was exploring a small section of the Milky Way
galaxy. I guess that, then, was the ultimate theme of the show: the
Unknown, and what exactly should be done about it. We are the Enterprise, and outer space is simply what the rest of the day has in store for us.

The problem for this series, dubbed Star Trek,
and, really, any TV show, movie, novel, or comic book with a space
ship--excuse me, starship--that has the improbable knack for traveling
at speeds faster than that of light, is that any civilization that could
create such a thing would be pretty goddamn strange itself. I mean,
think about it, that far in the future, who cares about other planets?
The Earth should be fucking awesome enough, right? Or if it's not fucking awesome enough that far in the future, then it would still be awesome for defying
expectations. Except at that point it becomes harder for the viewer to
identify with the citizens of such a strange world as they go out
seeking places even stranger. That problem could be solved simply by
having the show take place in 1966, except that the Americans and the
Russians were having a hard enough time reaching the moon, much less
Omega IV or Minara II.

To
get around all this, Roddenberry downplayed Earth's own futuristic
technology whenever he could. Sure, the USS. Enterprise had a machine
that could disassemble a person's molecules and then put them all back
together on a planet far below, but on the starship itself, everybody
still used elevators! Earth, at least on the original series, was never
visited, and only mentioned in terms 1966 audiences could relate to. Like, a
central character who grew up in Iowa once had a treehouse as a kid
(whether that treehouse was built with wood and nails or some
undiscovered element mined from a Beta Quadrant mining colony and held
together with synthetic tachyons is unknown.) And no matter how many
planets, races, and civilizations that are discovered between the present day and hundreds of years henceforth, Russian and Scottish accents still survive.
Comforting.

Roddenberry
didn't stop there. To emphasize that humans that far in the future would
still be undeniably, recognizably, human, he decided to contrast
Earth's native species with a crew member from another planet.
Originally half-Martian--that the red planet had sentient beings still
seemed possible in the 1960s as the popularity of a certain sitcom
starring Ray Walston would indicate--he then had the foresight to hedge
his bet by having this crew member come from a fictional world outside
our solar system called Vulcan. With a name like that, you'd think this
alien was made out of rubber. No, he just had pointy ears. Roddenberry
felt the actor who would play him, Leonard Nimoy, was alien-looking
enough. Really, he once was quoted a saying that. Nimoy took the job
anyway. Actors go where the work is.

Next up, the alien needed a name.

Roddenberry claimed never to have heard of the guy, 18,000,000 copies notwithstanding.

The first pilot film for Star Trek was titled "The Cage". Almost-but-not-quite-a-movie star Jeffrey Hunter (The Searchers, King ofKings)
plays Christopher Pike, captain of the aforementioned Enterprise. A
distress signal leads the starship to a planet in a relatively
unexplored part of the galaxy. A landing party led by Pike himself beams
down and finds human survivors of an expedition that went missing 18
years later. Among the survivors a hot chick (Susan Oliver) who lures a
wary but understandably intrigued Pike into a cave where he's captured
by a bunch of bulbous, varicose vein-headed aliens. From there Pike
finds himself in several different scenarios, all taken from various
events from his life, except this time he's reliving them with the hot
chick. Pike eventually figures out that these are illusions created by
the aliens--called Talosians--themselves, who want him to breed with the hot chick so
they'll have a race that will help them restore their dying
civilization. The Talosians then access the Enterprise computers and find
that the human race has a record of fleeing oppressive conditions--maybe
they saw footage of the Rio Grande--and therefore unsuitable as slave
labor. The landing party is allowed to return to their ship, but the hot
chick, who is quite real but once we see what she actually looks like
is no longer hot having been pulverized by the earlier crash landing and
then put back together the wrong way by the Talosians who had no idea what she
looked like (though you'd think they could have simply used their
telepathic powers to find out.)

As for Nimoy's Mr. Spock, he's not seen too much in the pilot, and when
he is, he seems like some dude you might run into at a sports bar,
pointed ears notwithstanding (which you might not even notice if you've had
too many jello shots). He's also quite emotional, grinning like an idiot
at one point. Maybe he's had too many jello shots. The cool
demeanor we've come to associate with the character is instead embodied
in Number One, the Enterprise's second-in-command, played here by Majel
Barrett (Roddenberry's soon-to-be-wife) who, though apparently human,
seems much more alien than Spock. A readjustment would be in order.

A readjustment brought about by NBC executives, who turned down the
pilot, finding it "too cerebral" and "too intellectual" . Too cerebral
and too intellectual for network execs used to watching I Dream of Jeannie or Flipper
maybe. "The Cage", later shown in truncated form as the two-parter "The
Menagerie", was a beautifully shot, sensitively told tale about the
seductiveness of memory that, sure, had some intelligence behind it, but
also scattered violence and a hint of sex that '60s audiences would
have dug. And besides, it's all precipitated by an alien abduction.
Since when is that plot device too intellectual? Rather than reject this
series out of hand (especially if it made them look too dim-witted in
doing so), the NBC bigwigs asked Roddenberry for a second pilot, a first
for the network.
Unfortunately, Jeffrey Hunter's contract didn't obligate him to a second
pilot, and so he opted out. The youthful-looking actor would spend the
rest of the 1960s bouncing back and forth between TV and movies until he
died from lingering injuries brought on by a freak explosion on a set
in Italy. He was
42.

In Hunter's place Roddenberry obtained the services of an
up-and-coming Shakespearean-trained (!) actor by the name of William
Shatner, who had a small part in Stanley Kramer's 1960 film Judgement at Nuremberg (no, he wasn't a Nazi), and had played the central character in the classic (in hindsight) Twilight Zone
episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", the one where the guy on an
airplane sees a gremlin. Roddenberry also decided to change the name of
the character to James T. Kirk, an allusion to Captain James Cook, the
real-life 18th century explorer who had discovered the Hawaiian Islands.
Kirk's TV discoveries would be decidedly less idyllic. Roddenberry's
later decision to show the "The Cage" in flashback form allowed both
Pike and Kirk to be included in the Star Trek mythos, but they really
did start out as the same guy.

A perhaps more significant change, at least for our purposes if not
Mr. Shatner's, had to do with the Number One character played by Majel
Barrett. The network bigwigs wanted her dropped. To his dying day,
Roddenberry would claim this was sexism on NBC's part, that they didn't
think a woman should have that large a part in an action-adventure
series. However, Herbert Solow, an executive at Desilu (formerly RKO)
studios, which produced Star Trek, has suggested the execs simply
didn't cotton to Roddenberry's mistress (he was married to someone else
at the time) in such a prominent role. More about Star Trek and
women in a future installment. Hoping to salvage his show, Roddenberry let Barrett go
(only to quickly bring her back as Nurse Chapel as well as the
voice of the Enterprise's computer.) They don't really tell you in "The
Cage" but Number One would seem to be a member of our species, you know,
the human race. Yet she was logical and showed little emotion. Well,
some homo sapiens are like that. In Earth vernacular it's known as
"having something stuck up your ass." Roddenberry thought maybe such
traits would be more palatable in an alien. So the gregarious Spock of
"The Cage" became the hard-nosed Spock of the second pilot "Where No Man
Has Gone Before." It made sense that if a guy's gonna come from a
different planet, he may be different in other ways as well. It was now
explicitly stated that on Spock's home planet Vulcan, people were
logical and had no emotions, either because they were born without them
or had done away with then through custom (over the years, various
versions of Star Trek have proffered both explanations.) But what
exactly does it mean to have no emotions? A venetian blind has
no discernible emotions yet you don't expect it to actlogically,
especially when you're trying to open and close the damn thing. Well, in that
second pilot, Spock does seem to have at least one discernible emotion,
that of a sourpuss.

As with "The Cage" the second pilot concerns a missing spacecraft, the
S.S. Valiant, not seen in 200 years. Belatedly deciding that it's time to
find out what went wrong, the USS. Enterprise heads out to the
(fictional) Galactic Barrier, a ring of energy surrounding the Milky
Way. Captain Kirk may have wished that it was fictional in his
own make-believe universe as well, as the Barrier ends up killing 9 crew
men, damages the Enterprise's systems, and knocks helmsman Gary Mitchell
(played by Gary Lockwood, star of Rodenberry's short-lived The
Lieutenant and soon to be seen in another sci-fi classic 2001:A Space
Odyssey) and ship psychiatrist Dr. Elizabeth Dehner (a young Sally
Kellerman) unconscious. Once they both come to, Dehner seems normal, but
Mitchell, eyes all aglow, finds he has ESP and other psychic skills,
which grow stronger which each passing minute. Spock (whose own ESP-like
talents go unmentioned) immediately decides Mitchell is a danger to
himself and others and demands Kirk keep him confined to his quarters
or some place for his own good. As Mitchell's an old friend from
academy days, Kirk is reluctant to do anything but reminisce with him
about classroom hijinks. Mitchell soon soon develops psychokinesis, the ability to manipulate matter, and
declares himself a god, at which Kirk, as his superior officer, takes
umbrage. Unfortunately it's now long past time to confine him to his
quarters, or anywhere else on the Enterprise. Spock thinks a more
lethal solution may be in order. Compounding matters, Dr. Dehner's eyes
are now beaming like a pair of Day-Glo cuff links, too. Not wanting to
kill a friend, Kirk decides to maroon Mitchell (after he's been
tranquilized) on an uninhabited planet. At this point you may think the next
best step would be to just shove Mitchell into a transporter, beam him
down, and then get the hell out. Except there's an unmanned
lithium-processing station down there, which they need access to in
order to repair the Enterprise's damaged engines. Mitchell, meanwhile,
breaks through his force field holding cell, kills a crew man, and gets
ready to kill Kirk as well, even creating a headstone for him. A now
all-powerful Dehner, meanwhile, has fallen for Mitchell, or has at least
decided birds of an omnipotent feather should stick together. Kirk somehow appeals
to her sense of humanity. She tries to talk sense into Mitchel, and is
fatally injured for her trouble. A mortal Kirk and the Godlike Mitchell
then engage in battle, which Kirk, or course, wins, as he'll win all his
battles through 79 episodes and 6 movies. 7 if you don't mind how that
last one ends. NBC execs were happy enough that he won the battle in the
second pilot (by causing a landslide) and picked up the series.

Now about Spock's debut as an emotionless Vulcan. I think it's more accurate to say he lacks positive emotions.
Fact is, he's just boiling over with anger and resentment in the second
pilot, stomping around the Enterprise, barking orders at subordinates,
practically barking orders at Kirk, his superior, and generally acting
like he's just escaped from the Asylum for the Pathologically Spiteful.
What a dick!

What's
odd, though, is how this all ends. After Kirk finishes describing the
whole chain of sorry events into his Captain's Log, adding that the
now-deceased Mitchell was under a kind of sickness and shouldn't be held
accountable for his actions, Spock, who didn't seem to have much use
for the helmsman throughout the entire pilot, states that he "felt for him,
too." A pleased Kirk tells Spock that "there's hope for you yet." Given
that Spock read the entire situation correctly whereas the Enterprise
captain almost let the whole thing spiral out of control, I think it's
the latter who's badly in need of hope. So what exactly is the moral of
this story other than people with Godlike powers shouldn't be allowed to
act Godlike? Shortly after 9/11 I recall seeing New York Times
Columnist Thomas Friedman on some talking head news show claiming
that it was a good thing then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was
on our side, because he was a little bit psycho and we needed someone
like that in the War on Terror. I think the subsequent debacle in Iraq
may have proved we could have done without Rumsefeld's psychosis. Still,
the idea is an old one. In a world, and maybe a galaxy, full of evil,
we need to be as ruthless as the bad guys in order to survive. In this
episode, then, Spock is a kind of Dirty Harry of outer space, and logic
is his .44 Magnum. "I know what you're thinking, punk: 'did he ask six Socratic questions or only five? Well, punk, in all
the confusion I forgot myself, but you have to ask yourself, 'since I
dropped out of the 7th grade and have no idea who Socrates is, is it my
lucky day?' Well, punk, luck is illogical!"

Whether
because Nimoy declined to play him that way, or Roddenberry thought it
might be too off-putting, Spock was never depicted in a such a
heavy-handed manner again. In the next show filmed (though it wouldn't be
aired until about halfway through the first season) "The Cobermite
Maneuver", one of the best episodes of the entire series, Spock is more
the even-tempered Vulcan that we know him best. Not that it does him any good. The Enterprise
encounters a giant spaceship that looks kind of like the ball that's
lowered on Times Square every New Year's Eve. Faced with imminent
destruction, Spock compares the situation to chess, and suggests that
they're on the verge of being checkmated. Kirk, though, comes up with a
better comparison: poker. He bluff's their unseen foe into backing off,
and when he eventually does see him, discovers that it's a friendly little
boy with an adult voice. As for the chastened Spock, he can only
remark, "I'll have to learn more about this 'poker'"--a philistine card
game having proved superior to a more intellectual diversion. And so it
goes for most of the first half of the first season. When Spock is at
his most easygoing, he's wrong. When he's right, he's unbearable.

Spock is seemingly wrong, wrong, and more wrong in "The Galileo Seven", which originally appeared about midway in the first season.
The Enterprise has to make the usual emergency medical supplies to the
usual plague-ridden colony, when they notice unusual quasar-like
phenomenon from a group of stars they're passing by. Since part of the
Enterprise's mission is to investigate anything unusual, Kirk decides to
send a party of seven commanded by Spock in the Galileo shuttlecraft to
check out the phenomenon, while the Enterprise proceeds on course with
the intended delivery, the idea being that they'll come back and join up
with them in a few days. Well, the phenomenon causes the Galileo to get
blown off course and they crash land on the wrong planet. Having lost
much of its fuel, the only way for the shuttlecraft to blast off back
into space is if just four people return in it. Rather than pick straws
to sees who stays behind, Spock decides to pick the unlucky trio
himself, a solution the rest of crew sees as not so much logical as
arrogant. A bunch of towering, even-more-hirsute-than-normal cave men
show up and kill one of the crew members with a spear, sparing Spock 1/3
of his difficult decision. More squabbling follows about who should
officiate at the dead man's funeral. Or rather, who shouldn't
officiate, as Spock wants no part of it. He's reminded that it's in fact
his duty as commander. He reluctantly agrees, but only after the
shuttlecraft is repaired. He also finds the murder weapon of
anthropological interest, a thought he really should have kept to
himself. More Spock logic follows, leading to disaster or hard feelings
or both. Somewhere along the way the restless natives kill another crew
member. The surviving team could just scare the cave men off (or kill
them) with their phasers, but they need the ammunition, i.e. energy
packs, to generate enough propulsion to get the Galileo off the ground.
With five now locked in the shuttlecraft (the plan to leave any more
behind forgotten), and with the cave men hitting the vehicle with spears
and pounding it with rocks, Spock muses out loud (and to unexpected
comic effect) about how his over-reliance on logic has endangered him and
everyone else:

SPOCK: Strange. Step by step, I have made the correct and logical decisions. And yet two men have died.CREW MEMBER: And you brought your furry friends down on us.SPOCK:
I do seem to have miscalculated regarding them, and inculcated
resentment on your parts. The sum of the parts cannot be greater than
the whole.CREW MEMBER: A little less analysis and more action. That's what we need, Mister Spock.

Finally spaceborne, but thinking they're by now light-years away from
the Enterprise with no hope of ever catching up, Spock jettisons the
little fuel that is left and sets it aflame, in the desperate hope that
this will get someone's attention. Turns out the starship was in the
neighborhood after all, and they're all rescued. When Kirk remarks to
Spock that his gambit seemed a bit illogical, Spock replies that in a
situation like that, illogic was the only logical course. At which point
the good captain and everybody else on deck has a good laugh.

Spock
starts out the heavy, but definitely becomes more sympathetic as this
story proceeds. Who among us hasn't tried to save face even as evidence
of our incompetence accumulates? Who hasn't been laughed at without
meaning to be funny? If you don't count "Amok Time" (where a Vulcan
femme-fatale actually causes all the trouble) Spock is never this wrong
again. More importantly, he's never this ruthless again. And he's not as
ruthless as you might think in this episode, either. Although he seems
somewhat callous at times, he alone rejects the idea of killing the
hairy beasts, whose planet this is, after all. A nobler, much more heroic, ultimately iconic Spock emerges from the ashes of "The Galileo Seven". To explain how this happens, we'll have to go look at the two writer-producers
who had the greatest impact on Star Trek.